Sherry Harsch-Porter founded The Porter Bay Group, Inc., a leadership development consulting firm, in 2000. Prior corporate experience includes AT&T / SBC Communications and DuPont. Over her corporate career, Sherry held positions in a wide variety of functions including Finance, Information Technology, Corporate Development, International Marketing, and Human Resources.
Sherry holds a Ph.D. in Social Science, a Master’s Degree in Human Resources Management, and a Bachelor’s Degree in Business Administration. She is a Board Certified Coach, achieved CCP (Certified Compensation Professional) and SPHR (Senior Professional in Human Resources) designations and is certified to administer a number of assessment tools including the Center for Creative Leadership’s suite of 360 degree assessments; Hay McBer’s Emotional Competency Inventory; Wiley Publishing’s DiSC® Behavioral Profile; CPP’s Myers Briggs Type Indicator; The Birkman Method; and Leader-to-Leader Institute's "Five Most Important Questions."
Sherry teaches a number of graduate-level courses including Executive Coaching; Leadership Skills for Women; Organizational Behavior; and Human Performance in Engineering at Washington University in St. Louis; is a frequent conference speaker and is published in a number of professional journals. She is a contributing author to the landmark coaching reference book "The Handbook of Knowledge-Based Coaching: From theory to practice" published in 2011 and author of “Education as Possibility: Coaching for Persistence” published in 2012.
Sherry has designed and delivered leadership development programs for a variety of organizations including The Deaconess Foundation, The American Society of Agronomy and the American Phytopathological Society. In 2013, she developed and co-led The MindBrew Learning Series, a public leadership course designed for nonprofit leaders.
Sherry serves as Chapter Chair and Facilitator for the Women Presidents’ Organization (WPO), an international nonprofit organization that serves highly successful women entrepreneurs. She is on the Steering Committee for St. Louis Graduates, an organization focused on increasing college graduation rates for low-income youth in the St. Louis region. She serves on a number of boards including the Graduate School Alliance for Executive Coaching where she helped develop academic standards for graduate programs in coaching. Sherry was a founding member of the St. Louis Chapter of Human Resource People and Strategy (HRPS) and served on the Executive Committee for a number of years. She works with organizations and leaders across a broad range of industries and sectors.
Sherry lives with her husband in Webster Groves, Missouri, a suburb of St. Louis. Together they have two sons, Zachary and Alex. In her free time, Sherry loves to garden, cook and work on the many household projects that come along with living in an old house.
Education
- Bachelor of Science in Business Administration
- Master’s Degree in Human Resource Management
- Ph.D. in Social Science
Work and teaching experience
- 20 years of leadership experience in Fortune 500 companies
- AT&T/SBC Communications
- DuPont
- Multiple functions: Finance/Information Technology/Corporate Development/Human Resources
- 15 years teaching experience
- Washington University
- Graduate courses in Arts & Science and Engineering departments
Credentials:
- Board Certified Coach (BCC)
- Senior Professional in Human Resources (SPHR)
- Certified Compensation Professional (CPP)
- Certified to administer and interpret self- and multi-rater assessments
- Social and Emotional Competency Inventory (Hay Group)
- Benchmarks (Center for Creative Leadership)
- Myers Briggs Type Indicator (CPP)
- The Birkman Method (Birkman)
- Everything DiSC (Wiley)
- Five Behaviors of a Cohesive Team (Wiley)
